The training plan

After signing up for my first ever 10km event (or any event at all, actually!) I drew up a training plan to take me neatly up to the distance over several months. I don’t know anything about running training plans, but this seemed pretty reasonable to me, an incremental increase of distance from a pretty comfy 5km to a more challenging 10km. So far so good, I was quietly happy with this.

Then I got sick. Nothing major, but it’s kept me off running and out of the gym for some 6 weeks now. I’m keeping as active as I can but I’m definitely in less good condition than I was and my training plan just collapsed. And yet I’m going to take part in this event anyway. I can definitely complete 10km, it’s just a question of how much is running and how much I’ll need to walk and how much I can be OK with that.

I came across the idea of A, B, C goals — where the A goal is what you’d really like to achieve in the event, that one that your training was building towards. The B goal is there in case things don’t go so well on the day so that you can pivot your plan and still achieve something meaningful. The C goal is a further step down that line as an extra backup.

It all sounded a bit serious when I read about it, as proper running people (haha!) have loads of measurements and goals that I don’t understand and feel really complicated. I’m not running for any kind of PB or particular speed, simply for the personal challenge of doing something physical that’s outside my comfort zone as a way of building confidence and resilience. So my C goal is just to participate in the event, finish the 10km distance even if it’s walking a lot of the way, and make sure that I keep my chin up and enjoy being there. This is still not a thing I could have imagining doing, or wanting to do, even a year ago when I ran my first 5km Park Run, which back then seemed like the most extreme physical challenge ever!

I’m still working out what my A and B goals might reasonably be. I guess I’ll wait and see how I am feeling nearer the time. I want to make sure they’re realistic so that I have a sense of good achievement whatever happens rather than feeling bad about myself because I was too sick to train. And I’m reminding myself that this is my first event, I’ll never have that newbie heart-in-mouth, I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this kind of excited feeling! I might as well enjoy that, and if I can enjoy it then I could imagine doing another event in future and replotting my training plan and my goals with all the knowledge and experience I’ve gained.

Life is for living. It’s not actually a race, it’s something to participate in 🙂